Current Location (Chris): Orlando, Florida
Current Location (Danielle): Home, NZ

Day 2. The start of day 2 was covered in yesterday. After hitting ‘Publish’ on ‘Day 1’ I upgrade from just coffee and went to check out the breakfast buffet. Welcome to America! There was everything even breakfast pizza! Yup. That’s apparently a thing. I did like that they have chef in the buffet cooking eggs to order. Breakfast was great but I felt like I had onboarded enough calories to last me the week.

Next I decided to get out and conduct a detailed examination of the shopping scene in Orlando. Truth be told I am probably more into shopping than Danielle. I found myself a new laptop bag which cost about that same as a mortgage repayment… My only saving grace was that I stopped at 1 and didn’t get the matching expandable bag to match. But it is made of Kevlar! You know the stuff bullet proof vests are made from! I never knew I needed one but wow. For those of you interested (https://shop.samsonite.com/sxk/). Also if anyone particularly generous wants to gift me another piece from the same range 😉.

Speaking of bullets that reminds me while in the spa pool or Jacuzzi on my first night the sprinkler system triggered early. An older fellow who was sitting at some nearby seating cried out “I’ve been hit” (not in a loud or over the top way) and people actually flinched / ducked… The fear of gun violence is front and centre in the minds of people here. Being from NZ this is hard to comprehend. Sunglass hut at the mall had a sign “Firearms not permitted” like this is a common problem? What do people do? “Do you have a pair of Raybans that will match my Glock?” “Let me just wave it around”… Yup it sure is different. Personally, I wind my sarcasm way down as I am mindful that being taken the wrong way here can escalate very quickly here. Getting shot is not on my todo list for this trip.

After clocking up 10k steps at the mall I decided to visit BestBuy one of my favourite stores here which has an outlet “just across the road” on the map. Nothing in America is just across the road. By the time I had made it out across the carpark and feeder roads, across the main road and into BestBuy it was the best part of a mile in 32 degree heat. I also found that I tried to get run over multiple times as I stuggle to not look the wrong way! Once I reached BestBuy all I wanted was to go back to my hotel and get my shoes off!

The afternoon was fairly uneventful with a long stint spent in the pool. Dinner was the obligatory fast food experience and a walk in the dark that I started to feel wasn’t such a great idea as there was no one else around. I ducked into a 24 hour drug store which is more like a supermarket that a chemist. Back to the Hotel via Uber.

Had a hard time getting to sleep and then woke at 6am very away and forced myself to get another hour. Now I’m back to sitting in the Hotel restaurant drinking coffee before breakfast at the start of Day 3.

Today is the first day of actual conference activities so unless you’re of ITNation there might not be much of an update tomorrow. I did however find out that the party tomorrow night is at SeaWorld (yup we have the whole place for the private event) and “Walk The Moon” will be paying live so that will be pretty cool.

Till next time… Chris.